Here vampirism isn't a blessed condition, but something to be rejected at all costs. It is significant that Blade is African-American, and the woman he rescues, Karen Jensen, is also African-American. Like Mumuwalde in Blacula, Blade is a minority attempting to retain his humanity in a majority culture that seeks to exploit, and sometimes, literally assimilate him. The vampires are an all male cadre of mostly white men, a sort of mafia running a secret government whose ultimate mission is to turn the human race into cattle. Something like the World Trade Organization? The vampires are always shown in exploitative, deviant sexual relationships. The film's first scene is in one of Frost's vampire nightclubs, which is itself in a slaughter house full of cattle, both human and animal.The vampire archives are kept beneath another vampire night club where patrons watch Japanese school girls rap. Frost encounters Blade in the daylight and encourages him to join the vampires rather than fighting with them. He says the humans will never accept Blade, a half-breed.
And Blade is a half-breed of sorts, both racially and species wise. He's the result of an interracial and inter species encounter. Regardless though, the majority culture will always reject him as one of their own. He'll be a black vampire.
Frost represents his own culture as a minority culture and accuses Blade of being an Uncle Tom because he cares for humans so much. Then he goes on to represent humans as cattle. The vampires are the true majority culture. This entire conversation takes place in front of a back drop of Asian people. Their racial identity in the United States underscores the ambiguous racial identity of Blade and Frost. In the United States, Asians are racial Others for some other purposes, and white for other purposes. According to U. S. Census data, rates of intermarriage between Caucasians and Asians are higher than are rates of intermarriage between blacks and whites, so a sort of assimilation is going on, but for other purposes Asians are represented as Others.
What culture does Blade belong to? He's born a vampire, but suppresses his vampire nature. Still, does this make him human?
Blade's only vulnerabilities are demonstrated when humans or blacks are in danger. He is distracted by a young black girl while in the archives who able to land several crushing blows to his upper body before he punches her. Frost is later able to capture Blade by distracting him with his mother. He is also vulnerable when Whistler and the little Asian girl are in danger.
Interracial relationships in this film are also represented as bad. Blade himself is the product of an interracial encounter that more closely resembles the couplings of plantation masters with their female slaves. When Frost feed off of Blade's mother, he in effect became the unborn Blade's father since the fetus was now tainted with the mother's turned blood. This is rather like a rape of a slave by her white master, where the resulting offspring, no matter how white, will be a slave (and therefore black by definition) because children followed the condition of their mothers. And at the beginning of the film, we see that Karen was once involved with a white man, but that didn't work out. Later, when Karen sees her old boyfriend once more, she discovers he didn't even make a good vampire. He was bitten but didn't turn right and now he's just a zombie who will eat anything, even other vampires. Perhaps this is emblematic of their previous relationship.
The vampire world is ultra modern and comfortless. Blade's temporary quarters are this way by necessity. Only Karen Jensen's living space is inviting with its warm lighting and antiques. ut this space ultimately cannot provide any protection from the harsher world. With the exception of Whistler, the people who help Blade wipe out the New York City vampires are black. The person who makes the serum that suppresses Blade's hunger and permits him to be a day walker is black. And Karen Jensen doesn't suffer from the female incompetence common among so many women in horror. Once she learns what's happened to her, she works on making a cure. She's also able to use weapons and fight.
Blade's relationship to his world makes him unable to express himself or love anyone. He's hyper masculine, not even allowing himself the luxury of a touching final moment with Whistler, the man who raised him. At one point Karen comments to him that a cold heart is a dead heart, for which he has no answer.
More bad parents. When Blade (Eric) finally meets his mother, he can consider himself fortunate she didn't raise him. She now enjoys being a vampire and would've raised her son to be the same. But now she completely betrays him to Frost, and places him in the chamber to be exsanginunaited to bring back La Magra. Karen serves as a foil to Blade's mother. She rescues Blade from the bleeding chamber, and feeds him with her own blood to give him strength. She will now succeed Whistler as Blade's caretaker, making serum and biological weapons for him to use in his battle against the vampires. And Frost too is a bad father to Blade. He bit Blade's mother, making her fetus a vampire, and is in this sense Blade's father. Frost, at least, is willing to accept his "son" into the fold, desiring to kill him out of self defense as much as anything else. Deacon too has been badly parented. As a half-breed vampire, he has been adequately parented by the pure blood vampires that he's now willing to sacrifice to bring back LaMagra.
Male and female vampires Vampires replicated the gendered power structure of humans in that male vampires feed off of female vampires. The female vampires (and less powerful male vampires) serve as support staff who are there to nurture and entertain the more powerful vampires. True in many of the texts we've read or viewed this semester: Dracula, Lost Souls, Bram Stoker's Dracula, A Vampire in Brooklyn and even to some extent Genieve in Anno Dracula. The female vampires who refuse to play this role are represented as truly monstrous, worse than the men who, it can be argue, are only following their "nature." Examples of this sort of female vampire can be seen in The Hunger, Nadja, Carmilla, and "Christabel." They are all the type of Lillth, Adam's "unnatural" first wife according to the Talmud who refused to submit sexually to her husband, and so was made into the mother of all demons. This structure is somewhat replicated through Blade's relationship with Karen. Karen is somewhat independent and can synthesize things that Blade needs to survive, but she's mainly there to support him as the general and one-man army who fights vampires.
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